The D Is For Deception
World War II was hell on Gen. George S. Patton Jr. In August 1943, General Eisenhower had put "Old Blood and Guts" on probation for slapping two battle-fatigued soldiers in Sicily and made him apologize in public. Then, early in 1944, came word of his next assignment. The man known for brilliance on the battlefield was going to take command of the 1st U.S. Army Group, a force that existed mostly on paper. His job duties: criss-crossing Britain on phony troop visits, sitting in on "planning sessions" with Eisenhower, and hobnobbing at garden parties with the English nobility. The 58-year-old general was the highest-profile cog in Operation Fortitude, the most elaborate and successful deception in military history.
Hitler was the target of the hoax. He knew that 2 million Allied troops were massing in England to assault the Nazis' vaunted "Fortress Europe." But he didn't know everything. "It is evident that an Anglo-Saxon landing in the West will and must come," Hitler told his commanders in March 1944. "How and where it will come no one knows." Operation Fortitude's goal was to make sure he didn't find out that the largest armada in history was soon to descend on Normandy's shores.
Allied planners wanted the Germans to believe that Patton's "massive" army would lead an offensive in France. To make sure Berlin knew about Patton's movements, the Allies fed information to a network of Nazi spies whom the British had captured and turned into double agents, and given such code names as Bronx, Lipstick, and Garbo.
Another key Fortitude player was Col. Rory MacLeod, a battle-scarred veteran of World War I with a silver plate in his skull to show for it. When Supreme Allied Headquarters summoned the British officer in March 1944, MacLeod went with hopes of leading troops in the impending invasion of France. Instead, the 52-year-old soldier was sent to Scotland to command an army that didn't exist.
In the months that followed, MacLeod and his aging officers flooded the airwaves with phony requests for a major attack on Nazi-occupied Norway. The phantom British 4th Army needed training for rock climbing and manuals on engine maintenance in extreme cold. They asked for thousands of crampons and ski bindings, essential for any army traversing the Nordic terrain. They leaked to the press about "4th Army football matches." One newspaper wrote of a "major in the 4th Army" getting married. The Allies knew Berlin was paying attention.
No tanks. Fortitude's success depended on two crucial deceptions. Allied war planners needed to convince the Germans not only that the invasion would come somewhere besides Normandy but also that when the Allies did land on D-Day, the Normandy invasion was only a minor part of a larger attack that would come in future weeks. This would tie down the 90 German divisions scattered around northern Europe and keep German war planners from reinforcing troops at Normandy. If the deception failed, German panzer tanks were quite capable of destroying Allied troops soon after their beach landing.
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